Overview:
So for the homework over the summer we are doing a walkcycle so that we can demonstrate our understanding of timing, movement, flow of motion, etc.
Here is the final result
As time goes on I’ll be updating this blog with all the progress that is made, and how it got there.
Day 1:
So this Monday, June 27, I was finally able to read the blackboard page on the assignment and vegan working on it Tuseday, June 28. I began by making some sketches of the human characters I would use.
for the assignment I want to experiment with different body shapes and weight as well as different personalities and how they affect their respective walk cycles. I was reminded of an animation meme that went around Youtube for a time between 2019-2020 where three characters were animated walking to the tune of Soldier, Poet, King by the Oh Hellos. So I thought I would try it a bit belatedly. So I began sketching some character designs based on a personal project I’m working on to fit the roles of the soldier, poet, and king.
The first sketches I made were of a large grunt character with an armour suit akin to power armour from several video game characters.
I would’ve liked to work with it in more detail but for the sake of the assignment I will keep it more simple, in fact later on I’m going to simplify the shapes of the character a bit more. Initially I was gonna use it as the “soldier” character for the song-video, but now plan to use it as the “king” character.
Next I worked on another character which was more tricky to design.
My biggest challenge was figuring out what I wanted it to look like and what to reference for the design. I was initially going to use books and pages as a motif, but then the idea of scrolls seemed to fit better. At the moment I’m thinking of referenceing priests and catholic people or egyptian mummies.
Day 2:
So now it’s Monday the 4th of July, (happy independance day to whomever it concerns) and I had to take a temporary haiatus since I was gone from Thursday to Saturday to help some relatives with moving, so I didn’t have any chance for working on the sketches. I did manage to squeeze in some sketches before I left but I forgot to take pictures of them. But today I did work on them and made a few design ideas for the second character.
I wasn’t sure what direction to go for this character all I knew was that they were a scribe, they would have some connection to scolls, and that they would have to look wise, or at least intelligent. So I looked at egyptian mummies, priests, and medieval monks for inspiration. I think I’ll mix and match some of the design elements to make a more finalized design. After that I’ll get to work on the final character and finally start animating.
Fingers crossed.
Day 3:
Tuesday, July the 5th, I began working on the shapes for the final character for the walk cycles. I have yet to finalize the previous character, but I wanted to get a little start on this character as well as I’ll be needing this character for my personal project later on.
I don’t have too much on him now, but I was looking into shape language again, and trying to see how best to use circles for designing my character to express that feeling of joy, friendliness, and innocence (?) that this character emanates.
At the moment I don’t have too much but I’ll be updating more and making more explorations both for this character and the last ones as I go on.
Day 4:
I went back to working on the second character, and took what aspects I liked from the previous explorations and mixed a couple of them together into amalgamated designs. The design on the right was a combination of the egyptian mummy with the monk’s garbs, the one on the left is the the mummy with the priest’s clothes. I waslo wanted to explore the wing shapes a bit more.
Day 5:
After a rather unproductive week I worked on making some more sketches this Sunday, July 10th, and returned to making the second character design. I took the final two designs I came up with and mixed some of their elements together. I also looked at pinterest for a few more references to make the collar. I have always wanted to add some kind of halo or ring around or on the character but still haven’t figured out much about how to do it. I’ll explore that later though as that would make the walkcycle more complicated, for now this IS the final design of the second character.
Day 6:
Monday, July 11th, I did some more exploratory sketches for the final character in the walkcycle. I am having a bit of trouble with this one but I want to be finished today so that I can start animating this Wednesday.
I will probably try to combine the original concepts with the latter ones, and figure out a way to make them work together and finalize this character. I need to remind myslef that while these are the final designs, they won’t be the official designs for my personal project so I don’t need to pressure myself into making the designs perfect. Besides, the designs need to be simple enough to animate with the main focus being on the walkcycle and how the characters move, not on the details and design.
Day 7:
I made progress with the final rough design for the final character, so now I’m gonna move onto the animation part of the project.
I think I took too long on this but I hope to work fast on the next part with everything that was on Blackboard both for this assignment and the 3D walkcycle assignment.
But this is what I have so far.
I’ll add more later today with what I have done on Krita.
Update: Managed to get this done today.
It’s a size chart of the characters that I’ll be using for the walkcycles. Speaking of which…
I am having a hard time getting the file to work, or rather render it as a gif. I don’t know why it’s so hard but I am struggling with this part of the operation.
It’s a bit rough but I intend to work on this more to get the walkcycle refined and with more character in the walk. Same will apply to the other characters too.
Day 8:
Finally got this done on Thursday, 14th July, incidentally my dad’s birthday.
Took me a long time to sort through and find a way to save this as a gif file from Krita, in the end I couldn’t get anything to work so I just exported the images and then imported them to photoshop to make the gif.
Hope to get this sorted out though for the future.
Day 9:
Friday 15th July, got a more refined version done but I’m not too sure about it ATM.
I’ll continue working on this and the others as time goes on.
Day 10:
Saturday 16th July, Managed to work on the rough animation a bit more, trying to exagerate the motions a bit more. I haven’t quite gotten it down right, but this is more or less what I’m going for.
I’m not going to do the rough again, but whenever I do get around to doing the character ontop of it I’ll be sure to make them appear more energetic an excited. Looking at this rough anim I get more heavy and serious tones, so I’ll try to fix that later.
The next phase will be working on the other characters, and then coming back over the rest to make the final lineart and animation.
After that, I should start the 3D animation assignment but who knows how that’ll go.
Day 11:
Friday July 29th, I have been working on the 3D character assignment doing a walkcycle in Maya with the AZRI model. After about a week I worked on the second character for the animation assignment. Took me a while to get it to look right, but I worked it out in the end.
The early rough animation
Not the same as the final rough, but it was a start. I wanted this character to feel lanky and tall, but also grounded and crital. So I would make the motion of the legs look larger and wider, and hunched over a bit. I didn’t quite get them to look lanky and tall, but they do look more or less what I intended.
It doesn’t entirely look right IMO, but for now this is alright. I might fix it later.
Day 12:
Friday, August 12. A lot happened between the last update and current progress on the walkcycle
The earliest version of the walk is a bit messy and hard to follow but I tried to use it as a guideline and improve on it.
The second pass, while being more complete felt too plain and didn’t give off the sense of weight intended for the character and theiur armour. I also felt it didn’t show any character or personality from it’s walk, or any for that matter. I would resolve this issue with later versions of it.
I over-compensated the errors from the last walkcycle. This last walkcycle I had the issue that it was too energetic and the head moved around too much. It didn’t feel any heavier, so I would have to fix it again. But this time I had a better grasp of what it needed to be like.
Day 13:
Saturday, August 13th, remade the walkcycle for the final character to something more in line with what was intended. Now it has the energetic and enthusiastic look while still retaining the heavier and consistent motion in some areas.
Day 14:
Friday, August 19th. After a long week of sooooo many setbacks and real-life events happening, I managed to get work done for the walkcycle and now I’m almost done with the walkcycles. I decided to go back and fix the second character’s walk cycle and I do like it more now.
I don’t think I’ll be able to get back into this walkcycle to make the lineart but I’ll be sure to post the final walkcycle with all the characters for this walkcycle.
Edit:
finished the three animation cycles and put them together but forgot to add it here so here it is.